The following post is an excerpt from EdTechTeacher CEO, Tom Daccord’s new blog: tomdaccord.com.

“I don’t have time.”

It’s teachers most frequently cited reason for not trying a new pedagogical strategy. At least it’s the reason I hear most frequently from middle and high school teachers who say they have no time to innovate because they have too much content to cover, “too much to do.”

It’s understandable why teachers would cite lack of time as their primary reason for not trying something new. Teachers face a dizzying array of content standards that they are expected to meet during the academic year as they prepare students for standardized assessments.

As a former Advanced Placement United States History teacher, I know what it’s like like to feel that you have way-too-much content to cover in way-too-little time. As content increased in my course over the years, my students ability to remember the content decreased. It was as if they had memorized information needed for tests and then it simply vanished from their minds.